U.S. President Donald Trump declared on Friday that he would not allow the purchase of oil from Venezuela, as his predecessor Joe Biden did when he lifted a series of sanctions.

“Biden went and bought millions of barrels of oil. I’m not going to allow something that stupid to happen again,” Trump said in remarks to the media in the Oval Office.

The president was asked about the visit of his special envoy, Richard Grenell, to meet with Nicolás Maduro at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas on Friday.

“He (Grenell) is meeting with a lot of different people,” Trump responded.

The Trump administration has had its first contact with Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela to advance the release of American hostages and ensure the repatriation of “criminals and gang members in a clear and unconditional manner.” The meeting took place just before U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first trip to Latin America, marking his first international tour.

Rick Grenell, Trump’s Special Envoy for Foreign Affairs, traveled to Venezuela to meet with Maduro and discuss the release of American hostages and the deportation of Venezuelans. This marks the first face-to-face encounter between the new U.S. government and the Chavismo regime, which may begin to shape the future of bilateral relations and whether the Trump administration plans to deploy a strategy aimed at seeking regime change in the Caribbean nation.

“We want to do something with Venezuela. I’ve been a big opponent of Venezuela and Maduro. They’ve treated us badly, and they’ve treated the Venezuelan people very badly,” Trump said in a statement in the Oval Office.

“From migration to security and trade, no other region in the world affects the daily lives of Americans more than the Western Hemisphere, and that’s why, under President Trump’s golden era, he has prioritized the Americas in this administration,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, Special Envoy for Latin America, in a call with journalists, confirming Grenell’s meeting in Caracas.

Florida Democrats in Congress criticized the Trump administration on Friday for reversing an 18-month extension of a federal program that protects over half a million Venezuelans from deportation. They urged officials to reinstate these protections for individuals from the South American nation.

In a letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the group of lawmakers stated that “sending Venezuelan immigrants back to a dictatorship that engages in torture, extrajudicial killings, and systematic human rights abuses would be a death sentence for many of our friends and neighbors.”

“This decision will have a devastating impact on more than 505,400 Venezuelans who currently rely on protected status,” the lawmakers wrote. “It will also severely affect the communities where they live, work, and pay taxes.”

The letter, led by Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Broward County and Darren Soto of Osceola County, follows Noem’s decision to cancel the program’s extension from April 2025 to October 2026. The extension had been announced by former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas just days before Biden left the White House. Noem argued that the decision should be left to the Trump administration.